Comic for Monday, August 14th, 2006

Posted: 12:30 am, Monday, August 14th

I'm not sure where this one ranks on all-time necessary Five Bucks to Friday strips - I'd imagine pretty low - but I had thought of that whole backstory for Grampa, and if I didn't get to it during this storyline, I'd probably never remember to spell it out, ever. So there you go.

Oh, site housekeeping - I updated the archive by description. I'll get to the cast page at the end of the month - I'm aiming for two-month cycles on both of those, offset by a month. I'm almost there. Also, if there's a reader, Nentuaby, in the house, I'm not sure which strip you were talking about with the wankers in blue shirts. Drop a link in the comments.

Man, 2.0 leaves town for the weekend, and what do I do? Well, I eat hot dogs and watch one of the Lord of the Rings movies. But I always do that when she leaves town. No, the new thing I did this time was manage to delete the DVD Decoder on my computer. Man, I'm stupid. I was removing a bunch of programs that appeared to be useless in an attempt to speed up my computer, and, of course, I got rid of some stuff I needed. Good work, huh? I figured out a standby in the meantime, though, and watched the original King Kong, which was almost shockingly good. I had never seen it all the way through - the beginning is way better than I expected it to be. Also, it was interesting to see how faithful Peter Jackson's version was. After killing the T-Rex in the original, Kong does the very apelike thing where he plays with the dead dino's mouth. I thought that was a new thing, but, no. My favorite line was when one of the sailors asks what a stegosaurus is, and Denham says, "It's from the dinosaur family." No shit, Sherlock? I guess maybe not everyone knew what a stegosaurus was back in '33. Anyway, I recommend it if you can put up with what is, today, very rudimentary effects (I didn't even find the treatment of the natives to be particularly offensive, which is nice). The lamest part is, by far, the love story between Anne Darrow and Jack Driscoll (the first mate in this version, which makes more sense than having him be a playwright). Retrocrush points out that you can see Fay Wray's breast in one sequence (you totally can, without even stop-framing the DVD).

Also, while 2.0 was out of town, I cleaned our fridge. It had taken on something of a bad odor. I was actually afraid I was going to find a decaying mouse in there or something. I did find an object that I think began its existence as cheese but had begun to liquefy, in the back of the fridge, but I think the issue was this hole that said 'Clean occassionally' had become jammed up with some heinous green gunk. So I cleaned the whole fridge out and put some new baking powder/soda, whichever absorbs odor, in there, and I'm hoping it's all OK.

I tried to watch some Vintage Base Ball yesterday, but the Brooklyn Stars were a no-show. So I watched batting practice for a while and got a handle on 1864 rules. You can catch the ball on the first bounce for an out, and the ball is way bouncier than today's baseball, so that really takes away a lot of drives to the outfield. I saw a lot of fielders run down a ball from behind in the outfield, and catch it on the high bounce. Seems to me the thing to do would be hit sharp, low grounders. No one uses a glove in 1864 rules, but you can't just Baltimore chop it, because it's still eligible to be caught on the high bounce. You need to force plays to first, since everyone short-hops the ball on throws to save their hands. Anyway, these were my observations.

How awesome is the University of Louisiana-Lafayette's alternative logo? I think it's even better than the Scottsdale Community College logo.

The insane and brilliant Marco brings you today's Daily Irish. Dear God, we're down to under twenty days. WHOOO!

Less a nightmare and more a page I just can't believe exists.

bullfrog

Did you notice that Kong bounces off the Empire State Building when he falls?

Yeah, I did. They made the ape very expressive, even if a few of his expressions were very Groucho Marx-ish.

The 'Fighting Artichokes' shorten their mascot to be "The 'Chokes"?!?!?!?!? How embarassing!!!

At least it's not "The A-Rods".

Reading that Retrocrush article pointed out that the crabs / spiders grossness was supposed to be in the original as well. I wish Jackson had cut that out also: that scene was creepy as shit. Worst bug scene since "Temple of Doom".

Had I been confronted with the bugs from that scene in the new Kong, I would've just given up.

I would be the lousiest film hero ever.